Clinton Adviser Warns of Government Web Threat

By Nick Clayton

The biggest threat to innovation in the world comes from governments, warned Alec Ross, a high-profile senior adviser on technology to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. He was speaking at Le Web conference in London Wednesday.

Citing the example of the U.S. anti-piracy act, “Sopa”, which collapsed after a massive public campaign co-ordinated by Internet users, he said this type of loss of control could lead to governments “lashing back”, according to the BBC.

Governments would begin “seeking to control your networks, seeking to take away your internet freedom”, he said…

“There is a massive shift in geopolitical power,” Mr Ross added. “It’s from hierarchies, including government and big media. There’s a shift in power to citizens and networks of citizens.

“This shifting power is being enabled by connecting technologies.

“The biggest threat to your ability to innovate comes from government, and I say that from Hillary Clinton’s office in the US State Department.”

He spoke about recent events in the Middle East where social networks had helped revolutions to grow rapidly. However, these uprisings often occur without a clear leader which creates challenges for those rebuilding after a dictator has been toppled.

“There’s nobody’s face you’re going to put on a t-shirt,” he said.

He added that the growth of mobile connectivity would make it harder for repressive governments to censor their citizens.

Comments (4 of 4)

do a google image search. do you know that google pays the people who took those pictures - nothing? Do you know how easy it would be for Google to share some of its $14B in ad revenue with the people who actually took the pictures and OWN THE COPYRIGHTS to the pictures that actually attracts people to their pages? these are the "blocks to innovation" that Alec Ross is concerned about. do you know how much money professional photographers have lost as an industry since this "innovation" came about?

8:23 am June 21, 2012

ethical fan wrote:

here is a great article about the first industry that lack of internet copyright enforcement destroyed - journalism. http://pewresearch.org/pubs/1523/state-of-the-news-media-2010. we now just accept the fact that WSJ, NYT, Time, Newsweek, etc write a story, people post it on Facebook or one of a million blogs and Facebook and the blogs sells ads and pay the copyright owner who bore the costs to write the article nothing. That is the "innovation" Alec Ross and his type are defending. Governments need to swing the pendulum back to enforcing copyright - a model that will employ more people and bring back jobs - not just enrich a few search engines, ad networks and ISPs.

8:11 am June 21, 2012

ethical fan wrote:

what are these "blocks to innovation" we hear so much about? This is code for don't make Google and ISPs obey copyright laws. Do you know that Google makes $14B a year in profit? Why are they so profitable? At this point its not innovation. Its piracy. Youtube stole content from millions of people and the only reason why they now pay some royalties is because Viacom sued them. 20% of all US Internet traffic is used to steal movies, music, software, games and books - most foundd by Google searches with ads from Google's ad networks.

8:05 am June 21, 2012

ethical fan wrote:

Piracy is big business and it’s disinformation campaign is very powerful. It is simply false that there are not many achievable countermeasures that can mitigate it. ISPs around the world work together to maintain up to the minute lists of ip addresses to block to reduce spam. Facebook and Google block sites with malware. ISPs and Google say its impossible to mitigate piracy because they make so much money from distributing content without compensating the owners.

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